About the Speakers

  • Jack Horner

    Jack Horner

    Paleontologist, Jurassic Park Consultant 

    John R. "Jack" Horner was born and raised in Shelby, Montana and attended the University of Montana for seven years majoring in geology and zoology.  Although never completing a formal degree, the University of Montana awarded him an honorary doctorate of Science in 1986. Also, in 1986 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Until June of 2016, when he retired from Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, Jack was Regent's Professor of Paleontology in the Department of Earth Sciences, and Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies. Jack studies dinosaur growth, behavior and evolution, and has published more than 150 professional papers, 9 popular books, 2 technical books, and more than 100 popular articles. 

    Jack was the technical advisor for all the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies and was Michael Crichton's basis for the Alan Grant character.  Jack currently works with Audrey O'Connell in a company called Horner Science Group that creates educational materials, exhibitions for museums, schools and the general public.  He is also teaching part-time as a Presidential Scholar at Chapman University in Orange, California. Jack lectures on dinosaurs, evolution, dyslexia, and creative thinking.  He splits his time between Bozeman, Montana and Orange, California.

    • Neil Cornish

      Neil Cornish

      Astrophysicist, 2017 Nobel Prize Team

      Neil Cornish grew up on a sheep station in the Australian bush where days spent tinkering with farm machinery and nights spent under a vast canopy of stars started him on a journey to discover what make the Universe tick. This journey has taken him to work with Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge, and to Princeton University where he worked on a NASA mission that imaged the afterglow of the Big Bang. 

      Neil lives under the big skies of Montana, where he heads up a research ground that is pioneering the new field of Gravitational Wave Astronomy.  In September 2015, his research contributed to the first detection of gravitational waves. This discovery led to his 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. Neil and research group shared in the 2016 Breakthrough Prize and the 2016 Gruber Cosmology prize for the discovery. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and serves as a NASA science advisor. Together with Paleontologist Jack Horner, and religious studies professor Michael Miles, he teaches an honors seminar entitled ‘Origins’, which explores the origin of the Universe, the origin of life, and the intersection of science and spirituality.

      • Michael Miles

        Michael Miles

        Honors Director Emeritus, Religious Studies

        Professor Michael Miles is Director Emeritus of the Honors College at Montana State University.  He began his academic career on the faculty of Carroll College, prior to embarking on a lengthy tenure with Montana State University.  He also served as special assistant to the Governor of Montana and to our state's senior U.S. Senator.

        Commitment to weaving academic disciplines together to inspire student excellence has marked his years of leadership within Honors.  He participated for a decade on the national board of trustees of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation and continues to mentor students for post-graduate scholarships.  He is the recipient of all major teaching awards granted by MSU, including the President's Distinguished Teaching Award, the Anna K. Fridley Distinguished Teaching Award and the Distinguished Phi Kappa Phi Member Award.

        The ‘Origins’ seminar embodies Miles' conviction that among the highest awards for any professor, is to inspire students to "think in questions."  Exploring as it does, the birth of the universe, the evolution of life and the philosophical and spiritual repercussions of contemporary science, ‘Origins’ exemplifies for him what an honors education can truly mean.  A professor and mentor in Honors for more than two decades, Miles continues to encourage students to live up to their gifts by pushing the boundaries and embracing education as a lifelong invitation to wonder.

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